Retrogaming Review of The Year 2023

 Retrogaming Review of The Year 2023

Gaming Archeology
After several years of wanting to bring it down from the loft, this was The Year of The Amiga at last! The 1500 came down and I experienced so much. Disappointments ('Batman: The Movie' wouldn't load beyond the first level), frustration ('The Kristal'), joys ('Flashback,' 'Lotus 2'), challenges ('Aunt Arctic Adventure'), but most interesting of all something hit me when I was testing 'Fire and Ice' - most games didn't save high scores to the game disk, but this one did and as I looked at them I suddenly realised the guy we got the game from (and gave us our first Amiga, the 500 - if you're out there John Farwell, good on yer, mate!), his initials were in the table. After almost thirty years something still existed of another time (even sweeter, my own scores were above his!). That's why I don't like deleting old saved games, or in this case, high scores: because they represent history. Artificial, fantasy as they are, games held a place in life that is part of that life and personal history and when so much is ephemeral and passing it's great to go back and play with so many Amiga memories that have stuck in my mind for decades. And so many games still to replay!

Visual Splendour
That wasn't the end of the delights however, as on bringing the N64 down for both my Christmas 'Zelda' and multiplayer, I stumbled upon a way to vastly improve the visuals: I was already splitting the VGA lead through which I play N64 on my Dell FP2007 monitor, partly to reduce the over-brightness, but also to connect my Amiga Scandoubler so I didn't have to keep switching between VGA connectors. I found if I plugged the splitter to the Scandoubler into the other port the N64 picture was basically as good as when I used Amiga monitors up until a few years ago. I wish I'd discovered that long ago!

Awards:
Surprise of The Year: Lotus 2
Disappointment of The Year: The Kristal

[Ratings reflect total, historical experience, not just the enjoyment level I got out of them this time.]


January - March: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011, Wii) - The tradition of the Christmas 'Zelda' reached as far into the series as I own with this Wii entry (only followed by two on the Switch since, I believe). It wasn't the most comfortable to play with Wii controls rather than a traditional Controller, but I still have happy memories, even if it took a long time to get through. I appreciate certain things about it in retrospect thanks to playing the original 3D 'Zelda' this last Christmas: the ability to run at top speed for one, and speed through text quickly without skipping it all! ***

January - December: WSC Real 08 (2008, Wii) - I had a go at an exhibition without any aids whatsoever and was completely and utterly humbled by the game. Snooker is a Very Tough Game. On the positives, I finally made it to number one in the world, beating out Ronnie O'Sullivan. If I continue next year (and no reason why I wouldn't since this is my second favourite game on the console!), should I stick with it, basking in my status and continuing to sweep up all (or most), trophies before me, or switch to a Pool career? ****

January - December: UFO: Enemy Unknown (1993, Amiga 1200) - The old stalwart keeps on going. Nothing new to report, other than in game time I've made it to 2016! I did see if I could play it on the 1500, but I seem to remember it didn't work on that machine. *****

February - December: Wii Sports (2006, Wii) - Along with 'WSCR' and 'UFO' this is my third game I keep going back to year after year, week after week. Well, probably month after month as I only generally get in a couple of sessions in a month dependent on work shifts and snooker on TV, that kind of thing. Yo-yoing in the boxing mode where I'd build my points up over the 2100 level, then get knocked down in one match and lose tens of points and have to build back up again. Still good exercise, however, and I continue to enjoy the target golf, tennis against a wall, and hitting home runs. ***

March - April: Splinter Cell (2002, GameCube) - 'Rick Dangerous' was the game which came to mind playing this: an Indiana Jones-type exploring underground environments where every few seconds you'd be killed by a trap and have to restart, a test of memory in order to survive each level. 'Splinter Cell' isn't that bad, but you often find yourself failing out of the blue because a strategy didn't work in a situation, or you thought you couldn't be seen, but you could. That was a big annoyance, not being clear on exactly which areas were dark enough to hide in - I heard back in the day the Xbox version had the best graphics, perhaps that would have made a difference. It wouldn't have solved the awkward controls and insistence on linearity, two aspects that drag the gameplay down, mainly because you're constantly in situations requiring precise, timely action, and with myriad controls, varied gadgets and weapons, and somewhat of a counterintuitive style, it could be irritating: my biggest complaint is no customisable controls, so you have to go without inverted sight or aiming. Push up to look... up? It doesn't make sense for those weaned on 'Goldeneye' and suchlike! Another game similar in style was 'Hitman 2,' also on 'Cube, but while that had the same control annoyances, it also had wide open levels where you could approach many missions as you saw fit rather than being directed down a predetermined path. There's also the usual gaming insistence on inconsistency: you can climb some things, but not others, you have all these moves, but no ability to lie flat on the ground or crawl... For all its faults, I still found it a fairly enjoyable diversion, though I'm undecided whether I'd play the many sequels. I'd probably go back to this game in a decade or so to complete on the hardest skill level, but it's not a priority. **

May - July: Perfect Dark (2000, N64) - What needs to be said? Simply the most technically accomplished game on the system, options coming at you like machine gun bullets, and a vast array of challenge on offer. I greatly enjoyed returning to one of my favourite games of all time and it didn't matter I hadn't worked out how to get the best picture for N64 games since this is one of the titles that has a high enough resolution to be played through the RCA lead that comes as standard with an N64, so I've never needed to go the VGA route with this. I achieved everything I had previously, as well as unlocking any cheats I hadn't originally, and what I'm most proud of: beating all thirty Combat Simulator Challenges, something I'd never quite achieved before, and which was a real tough course in the last couple. Best of all, I played it in the year (in fact even the month!), it's set in, the reason I'd held it in abeyance for so long. The only sad thing is it's almost the last great N64 game I hadn't revisited! *****

July - August: Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (1991, Amiga 1500) - Why only three stars while giving it the accolade of Biggest Surprise of The Year? Simply because I wasn't expecting much from this and it surpassed expectations by proving to be just as enjoyable (and tough!), a racing game as most other titles I've played on N64, 'Cube and Wii. I was disappointed my 'Lotus III' disks weren't working any more as this made me want to play more 'Lotus,' but while it wasn't amazing, it did everything well and had so many details I appreciated. A game from so long ago in a genre that tends to rely on graphics and technical sophistication could have been at a major disadvantage, but it had great pick-up-and-play appeal, a strong difficulty curve and a certain beauty to its simplicity that took me back to the Old Days wonderfully and helped to justify me finally getting the 1500 down after many years of wanting to do so. It started the adventure off in a way that made me want to revisit as many old classics as I can and in that respect was the ideal first game to go back to. ***

August: Aunt Arctic Adventure (1988, Amiga 1500) -
- Not necessarily a game I could recommend, though as a tough, but achievable 2D platform game that I'd never got far on in the Nineties, I was thrilled to gradually build up to completing it. It's easy in the sense that you have infinite attempts at success, so then it's a matter of whether you have five or six hours to spare to work your way around each of the fifty levels' environments. The graphics were sparse, the sound effects and music limited. But nevertheless this had a charm from its simplicity that I appreciated. It took more than one day off (playing morning and afternoon), to finally beat it thanks to a cruel streak that saw you get irrevocably trapped in a couple of later levels with no way to die, no way to restart except from the beginning, but if the game laughed at me I had the last laugh and there probably wasn't a greater feeling of satisfaction I had in gaming this year. ***

August: The Kristal (1989, Amiga 1500) - Oh dear. Not all old games welcome with open arms and this was the one that truly frustrated and upset me. It's just too obscure in its sequence of events and you're left too open to narrow down what you have to do since you can type anything to speak to characters, yet need to say the right thing. I can feel somewhat superior to modern gamers sometimes when I think how easy games became, all encouraging, so many ways to make playing more comfortable with saved games, ergonomic controls, logical developments, etc, and I can take on plenty of toughness in the wilderness of older games (see the previous two above), but this must be where my particular generation bows to the previous one since I would not be able to stand text adventures. This was disguised with lovely graphics and animation, but at heart this is like one of those unforgiving text-based games that taxes even my patience. I know it's a black mark against me that I couldn't take it, but I couldn't, and there are far too many games to play to sit puzzling over what to do for hours, and I couldn't go down the walkthrough route of looking up what to do as that isn't playing a game in my book. Would I ever go back to it? I don't know, there are so many Amiga games to play, let alone on other systems and I'm not getting any younger! *

August - September: APB (1989, Amiga 1500) - Very much a conversion of a coin-op, so no saving, but it had an addictive quality. You choose one of the first eight days to begin on, which decides your quotas, either ramming offenders or driving into people that need help or are hitch-hiking (doesn't sound quite right!). The animations were fun, though graphics in general very basic. It did provide a sense of freedom as you can drive down any road, even if the town all looks similar and you couldn't really plan that well - pickups in the form of money bags were random, so you might return to a spot that previously gave you an instant quota fulfilment and it may well be a booby trap. There was no way to remove demerits (other than rare pickups that took one away), and once at twelve it was game over. The controls were the real issue, awkward because the single fire button was used to keep your siren on - it may as well have been on all the time since without it you're much more vulnerable to collisions - even if other cars drive into you, you get a demerit! You push forward to go faster, pull back to slow, and turn with left and right, but this made it harder to control than it should've been, another of those games hard on the hands thanks to the necessity of gripping the Joystick hard and keeping the button depressed. The side objective was to capture certain criminals on specific days, and on returning to HQ you'd interrogate them by wiggling the 'stick as hard as possible before the boss enters the room! It was fun, but also very limited and I could barely get past Day 10 as you're suddenly given so little time to achieve your quota. Like many Eighties games it felt unfair, takes more effort than is rewarded, but also paved the way for top-down free-roaming car games after it. Knockabout fun for a few hours, but eventually palls. "Reorayreorayreoray,thanguverymuchwelldone." **

September: Flashback (1992, Amiga 1500) - If 'Aunt Arctic' wasn't a game I'd necessarily recommend, this is one that is fixed in my mind as one of my most revolutionary gaming experiences ever, up there with my first 'Zelda' ('Link's Awakening'), my first 3D 'Zelda' ('Ocarina of Time'), and many other BIG games that have meant the most to me over the years ('Settlers,' 'UFO,' 'Dune II,' 'Age of Empires'... the list goes on). It couldn't possibly live up to the memories inextricably linked with the late-Nineties; playing it at Easter; one of the few games I could actually complete; the impression of an entire world in a game thanks to the large second level with its various tasks... Of course that art style which is as beautiful as ever, perhaps the greatest example of the pixel genre. There wasn't as much music as I remembered and it was used fleetingly. The cutscenes are no longer a revolution in themselves, and... but no, the controls remained superb, the animation wondrous - again, it's simplicity that works so well. I can't honestly say I loved it as I loved it back then, but I've been waiting many years for the chance to replay it, in fact the main reason for getting the 1500 down was for this game, and I was so glad to be able to revisit it at last, an absolute classic and a sign of the cinematic direction that would come after it. *****

September - October: Nitro (1990, Amiga 1500) - Good, fun plan-view racer set in a 'Mad Max'-type post-apocalyptic future world with cyborg people, but importantly you can collect money, fuel and other things to bolster your racing quality so it was a bit like a simple roleplaying game where you can level up, plus three different types of vehicle. The only reason I didn't play it more was because it was a bit glitchy and would too often crash or freeze. Maybe it needed to be played on an Amiga 500, but I'll always have a soft spot for it (my main memory of it is that it had an extremely rare three-player option and when we had a French exchange student staying with us we played it with her!). I'd love to play it properly and get to know it because it had a certain verve and immediacy. You can't go too wrong with a top-down racer (or almost any racer for that matter), and I'm giving it a relatively high mark more for its potential and that I wish I could have had a proper go at it than for the actual enjoyment gleaned due to the instability of the disk. ***

October: The Chaos Engine (1992, Amiga 1500/1200) - I'm amazed I never played this on my 1200 before, I felt like it hadn't worked previously. Either way, this time I was able to and quite enjoyed it. Never having been much of a shoot'em-up guy I nevertheless appreciated the graphics and sound and found it somewhat easier than the similar 'Alien Breed II' which I'd played a lot in the past (and completed in the last decade or so). I had no prior connection to this game other than seeing it on lists of the best Amiga games in the many magazines I read over the years so I certainly felt it warranted exploration. In no way anything special to me, though I suppose the various options to upgrade your character give it more depth than some games. It showed the development of AI since you have a computer player accompanying you all the time and he does acquit himself pretty well most of the time. It was really designed to be a two-player experience, something difficult for me to arrange as who would play old Amiga games these days, but as a single-player adventure I was pleased to conquer it, though it was much smaller than I expected. Started it on 1500, but found it easier to stay on 1200 so I didn't have to switch between machines for this and 'UFO.' ***

October - December: Metroid Prime (2003, GameCube) - Dingy, backtracking as a way of life, enemies continually regenerating... I can come up with plenty of negatives, but that's because the game's punching down from above. It was a technical achievement for its machine and began a series that ended on the successor. Always one I'd wanted to replay, though I didn't realise how long ago I'd first played it! It's a sprawling shooting adventure that took me a good number of hours to beat, not least because I was playing on Hard Mode and really trying to get every scan and achieve 100%. Sadly it was not to be for me on this occasion, I don't know how possible that even is as I scratched around in every nook and cranny and still didn't even find everything there was to find. I certainly enjoyed it, though not perhaps as much as I'd expected - I really thought I'd be giving it four stars having that number in mind for its sequels. I expect if you'd never played a 'Metroid' before this would come across better, it is basically a 'Zelda' game that all takes place in one huge dungeon of various sectors and environments, without the character interaction, trading or any other sub-quests, plus added combat within the mix of exploration and scanning. It did make me want to revisit the first sequel, but as that's one of the few games which is 60hz only, and my monitor doesn't seem to like that, I'd have to find a way to connect a Wii to VGA, which so far hasn't been successful. ***

December: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, N64) - Truly a legend, 'PD' wasn't the last top title on the system I hadn't revisited, this is literally the only great I had yet to return to, and to keep up my Christmas tradition started in 2019 (or 2018 if you count playing 'Wind Waker' into December!). The only remaining 3D entry in the series (that I own), I hadn't gone back to, though also the one I've revisited the most overall since I played it a couple of times originally in '99 and the early 2000s, first on N64, then on 'Cube, and watched or helped other family members - I'd have preferred the harder 'Master Quest' version which I've never played, but it'd have required getting down the last remaining Amiga monitor (like 'Metroid Prime 2' it only plays in 60hz), which is not in the best condition and it also gave me the excuse to bring the N64 downstairs for post-Christmas fun which I haven't done in many years, so going back to the roots, though the graphics are relatively muddied, it takes me to student days of yore. Not the first 'Zelda' I ever played, but certainly one of the most enduring, whether playing or watching relatives. Fortunately I found one of the three files was started by a cousin (calling himself 'LINK' - original!), who'd only reached the second dungeon and a mere five Golden Skulltulas, so I had fewer qualms about deleting gaming history on this occasion! As it was I only managed to fit in the first five dungeons, reaching the Ice Cavern, pre-Water Temple by the end of the year, so roughly halfway, maybe a little more. It's benefited from the enhanced connection I discovered (wish I'd found that out for 'Majora's Mask'!), and has been lovely to revisit. Yes, it looks smaller, more basic with minor annoyances like taking time to get places or accidentally skipping text because you want it to appear quicker, but I've never got stuck because I know the types of puzzles so well. And in many ways it's been superseded by subsequent iterations, but there's still that spark of originality and cinematic portrayal of this land and its peoples that shows they didn't merely advance from 2D to 3D, but also brought the storytelling to a new and vibrant level. I'm paying particular attention to finding all the Heart Pieces and Golden Skulltulas this time since I didn't get every one, and I expect it to last a few more weeks yet... *****

Honourable mentions: 'Burnout 2' for traditional Christmas leftovers multiplayer (*****, Jan), and the same for 'MarioKart: Double Dash (*****, Jan), 'Star Wars: Rogue Squadron' a brief play in July that I wasn't encouraged to pursue (***), partly because there were no free files and I didn't want to delete one, 'Batman,' the Amiga platformer based on the 1989 film (**), which wouldn't load the second level, this Christmas' multiplayer fun with 'WWF Wrestlemania 2000 (****), 'The World Is Not Enough' (*****), Perfect Dark (***** - I rose to Elite:4 ranking!), Snowboard Kids (*****), Mario Kart 64 (*****), and 'Top Gear Rally 2' (**** - not for the multiplayer, but for the game overall).


Next Year - I've played so many of the great games or the ones I really wanted to replay, succeeded in 'PD,' 'Metroid,' 'Splinter Cell' and of course the Amiga 1500, not to mention getting back into reading NGamer Magazine as I found pdfs online for issues I didn't have, which in turn gives me more perspective on the Wii, but still in 2024 I'd like to:

- Get the Amiga down...  no, hang on I've done that already: plenty more Amiga games to complete, most likely 'Fire & Ice,' and 'Soccer Kid,' maybe 'Desert Strike,' and 'Simulcra'

- Seeing N64 games the way they should be seen means my hunger to get into that system, too, has increased and with purchases last year of 'Wipeout 64,' 'Blast Corps,' 'Operation Winback' and 'Lylat Wars,' I have a good selection of new experiences to choose from

- Don't want to forget the Wii, specifically longer games like 'Pirates' or 'Bully,' plus another 'Need For Speed'

- Ought to allow time for one, at least, of another title on 'Cube ('Starsky & Hutch' in honour of David Soul's recent death, perhaps?)

- 'Age of Empires III'? As the only version I can still play and my Father playing it so much in 2023 made me think about it again

- Christmas 'Zelda' will have to be either 'Link's Awakening' or 'Oracle of Ages,' or both (unless I get a Switch or 'Minish Cap' for GBA), or unless I can find a way to play 'Metroid Prime 2' since that's very similar...

Happy New Year!